Dear Editor:

Recently it was announced in this paper that Boothbay Region High School technology educator Chip Schwehm is soon to retire. Schwehm is the school’s STEAM teacher and holds a special industrial arts and technology certificate that allows him to run the shop and technical education program.

The CSD School Committee approved moving forward towards a possible partnership with Bath Tech to create a satellite Career and Technical Education exploratory program at BRHS. Bath Tech can hire someone under a CTE umbrella who has industry experience, such as a carpenter or welder, even without the technical certificate. see BBH [http://csd%20eyes%20exploratory%20program%20for%20tech%20education/]CSD eyes exploratory program for tech education.

Bath Tech is not a public high school, it is a non-profit high school. This makes more sense than teaching industrial job training in a public school funded by municipal tax payers as municipal taxes should be reserved for the common good rather than special interests. A non-profit is funded by donations made by individual choice.

A TIF zone was recently created in Boothbay which includes the Industrial Park. TIF zones are instruments of economic development and so it makes sense to locate industrial job training in the Industrial Park as a non-profit school similar to Bath Tech.

In the public school discussion, there is much talk about networking with the University of Maine. A project has only to be deemed, by the University, to be using its facilities “more than incidently” for the University to claim intellectual property ownership over the work products of the project. (See Statement of Policy Governing Patents and Copyrights, and scroll to the end.) Such a policy would dissuade authors and creators rather than encourage them.

Public and private Institutions can have non-profit or for-profit subsidiaries allowing a private industry to form a non-profit subsidiary for its industrial job training.

An industrial training center completely separate from the public educational system would be better protection for innovative enterprises and fairer for local taxpayers. This would also be a plus for the Industrial Park.

Susan M. Andersen

Boothbay Harbor